


Tell me why my gods look like you

by narcissablaxk



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series), Karate Kid (Movies)
Genre: Bar Scene, Billiards are involved, Canon Divergence, Divorced Daniel, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, M/M, fluff?, lawrusso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25011241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narcissablaxk/pseuds/narcissablaxk
Summary: Daniel is just trying to get back out there after his divorce - and getting back out there means going to the bar and deciding to chat someone up; unfortunately, it's very hard to flirt with someone when your biggest frenemy is in the same bar, watching you from the pool tables.
Relationships: Daniel LaRusso/Johnny Lawrence
Comments: 15
Kudos: 339





	Tell me why my gods look like you

It took Daniel over six months after his divorce was finalized before he ventured out to a bar on a Friday night with the intention of chatting up someone. Even now, sitting at the bar with a martini in front of him, it didn’t feel right – he was too old for this, too out of practice, and the first conversation he overheard when he came in was an in-depth narrative on “clapback theory.” If he was going to be expected to know what that is, he might as well get drunk in the comfort of his own home. 

He had been here for over an hour, and not only had he not chatted anyone up, he didn’t really see anyone that piqued his interest. If he were being completely honest, he hadn’t spent a lot of time observing the people around him, but still. 

“Drinking alone?” her voice was just close enough that he knew immediately she was talking to him. He turned, catching sight of a painfully beautiful woman with a dangerously low-cut dress, cascading blonde hair, big green eyes, the whole package. Still, he felt nothing but dread. How on earth was he meant to keep her attention? 

He couldn’t keep his ex-wife’s attention, how could he do it here? 

“Uh, yeah,” he said, tilting his head to his martini. “Trying to figure out how to talk to people.” 

“It is hard,” she agreed, looking away from him to the crowd, a swirling mass of people either dancing, playing pool, or drinking. “You can practice on me, if you like.” 

It was a nice enough offer, and she seemed to be looking for nothing more than a conversation, so Daniel turned himself around on the bar stool so that his back was to the bar, and angled his knees toward her. 

“As cliché as it is,” she said, leaning close to him as if telling him a secret (she was just giving him a nice show of her cleavage, which he could see perfectly fine from where she had been before, honestly), “sometimes it’s easier to ask if I come here often.” 

He kept his eyes stubbornly on her face, refusing to fall into the trap of staring at her chest. “I’d say you don’t come here often,” he replied. “If you did, you would have made some comment about how you’ve never seen me here before.” 

She seemed to approve of that response, and Daniel took that triumphant moment to look out at the crowd. There were a group of women by the pool table, watching but not playing, dressed similarly to the woman sitting next to him. 

“I’d say those are your friends,” he indicated the group. “And you’re out for a bit of fun.” 

She smirked at him. “See, you don’t need my help after all.” 

“If I really didn’t need your help, I would have asked you your name by now.” 

“Avery,” she offered, and she didn’t hold her hand out for him to shake, but he was a car salesman, so it felt like there was something missing to the entire exchange without it. It took him a moment before he realized that this was where, in a civilized conversation, he was supposed to give her his name. 

“Daniel,” he said far too late. 

“Can I buy you a drink, Daniel?” she asked, already turning gracefully back to the bartender. 

He wanted to make a comment about how that was supposed to be his line, but she was already telling the bartender to get him another martini, and she was ordering an Old Fashioned, confident and at ease in a way that Daniel hadn’t felt probably ever in his life. 

“If you don’t come here often,” he finally said, drawing her attention back to him, “what’s the occasion?” 

“Occasion?” 

“You and your friends got all dressed up and came to a new bar,” he pointed out, looking back at her group of friends, now fawning over some guy who had just won a game of pool. It was like looking in on a man’s man action movie – one good looking man surrounded by beautiful women, doing something mundane that somehow kept them enthralled. For a moment, Daniel hated the faceless man, turned away from him, drinking a Coor’s, obscured by his opponent and the gaggle of women. 

“Oh, it’s Kay’s birthday,” Avery said, grinning, her teeth straight and white and almost vampiric. “She’s 21 today, finally.” 

She turned back to her friends, wagging her fingers at a redhead, who was wrapping an arm around the pool player’s waist, small and slightly built. 

Wait – her friend was only 21? Daniel felt the room still; he turned back to Avery, seeing her with new eyes. 

“Oh, she’s – she’s 21,” he stammered, reaching almost blindly for his martini. “That’s… _young_.” He was anxiously trying to figure out how young Avery was. But he was bad at guessing age, and he couldn’t conclusively come up with anything. He took a deep pull of the now-room temperature martini.

“She’s the baby of the group,” Avery agreed, taking a shallow sip of her drink. 

“Is she?” That was marginally better, he supposed. “By…a lot?” The idea that this woman was closer to his daughter’s age than his own was borderline horrifying. He could feel his leg tapping on the leg of the stool.

“I mean, we all used to go to high school together,” Avery seemed largely oblivious to his distress. “She was a freshman when we were seniors.” 

Holy _shit,_ they were still young enough to remember things like that. A quick math problem told Daniel this girl was, if he was lucky, only 25, and that was – _fuck_ – half his age. 

He looked desperately out to the crowd again, looking for a distraction, something else to talk about that would keep this conversation so painfully mundane that she would get bored and leave. He glanced back to the pool table, where the guy with the rest of Avery’s friends was setting up a new game. His opponent had moved on to someone else, and a new guy was lingering at the edge of the table, watching him set up. 

And then he stepped back, holding the white cue ball, and Daniel had the wind knocked clean out of him. 

It was Johnny Lawrence, his black leather jacket unzipped and revealing his artfully faded Zebra shirt, his bottle of Coor’s held loosely in his other hand, at ease and at home surrounded by women half his age. 

And then Johnny’s eyes met his, and he went very still. 

_Fuck._

“Look, if you’re worried about my age, it’s fine,” Avery said, abandoning her pretense when she saw that Daniel had checked out of the conversation. “I like older men.” 

He blinked, returning his attention to her. “I – I’m flattered –”

“Daniel,” she put her hand on his chest, pulling at the collar of his jacket. “Relax. I’m not a kid.” 

_Yes_ she was, his brain said. Abandon ship! Mayday!

“You came here looking for a good time, right?” she asked, her green eyes depthless, guileless. He tore his eyes away from her, trying to spot Johnny again. Where had he gone? “That’s why I’m here, too. There’s no reason to let my age get in the way –”

“LaRusso.” 

Johnny appeared at his elbow, leaning between Daniel and Avery to catch the bartender’s attention. “Can I get another Coor’s, and a Shirley Temple for this guy?” he tilted his head at Daniel, catching his eyes in a quick glance, blue and bright and full of mirth. 

“Avery!” Kay had been lured to the bar, probably following Johnny, and Avery sidled over to talk to her, her eyes still straying back to Daniel, as if hoping he’d call her back. 

“Come here often?” 

“Do _you_ come here often?” Daniel shot back, rolling his eyes when the bartender dutifully set a Shirley Temple in front of him. 

“Hey, that’s my line,” Johnny seemed to be in a good enough mood. He leaned on the bar, surveying the girls, now talking among themselves, back by the pool table. “I see the blonde took a liking to you.” 

“She’s 25,” Daniel spluttered, grabbing the Shirley Temple, even though he knew drinking it would only amuse Johnny. He sipped it anyway, meeting Johnny’s amused gaze over the glass. 

“Yeah,” Johnny said. 

“You know that?!” 

He rolled his eyes, taking a drink from his beer. “Of course I know that, LaRusso, I don’t take these girls home.” 

“That other one,” Daniel tilted his head at Avery without looking at her, trying to be subtle. Johnny’s smirk told him he failed. “She was…determined.” 

Johnny gave him a long, searching look that scanned up and down his body, dark and inscrutable. “I get it,” he said noncommittally. 

“What does that mean?” Daniel asked, a tad belligerently. 

“Do you want to play?” Johnny asked without answering. 

“What?” 

“Pool,” Johnny jerked his head in the direction of the table. He leaned closer, so he was speaking almost directly in Daniel’s ear. “That way I can protect you from that big, bad blonde.” 

Daniel shivered. “I don’t know how to play,” he admitted. 

“I’ll teach you.” 

***

Johnny liked coming to this bar on Friday nights. All of the idiots who were trying desperately to get laid always showed up, hellbent on impressing any moderately attractive woman in the vicinity, and they were all willing to bet money on pool. He didn’t swindle them, exactly, he just happened to be good at pool. 

Mostly, he only earned enough money from those games to pay for his bar tab at the end of the night. 

He’d had more than the usual success today. Not monetarily, but those girls had brought him plenty of entertainment, young and youthful and funny in a way he hadn’t expected. And it seemed they were fine with some harmless flirting. 

And then he’d spotted Daniel fucking LaRusso at the bar, his tie getting fondled by one of the prettier of the girls who had peeled off during his last game. A spike of warmth shuddered through him, disarming and sudden and all too difficult to ignore. 

He had taken a little too much pleasure in pushing between them to order a drink, especially when he felt LaRusso’s sharp intake of breath when he did it, his chest brushing against his arm. 

Now, with very little trouble, he had LaRusso over at the pool tables with him, shoulder-to-shoulder, his little glass of Shirley Temple in his hand. Johnny wondered if he realized he was even holding it. 

He ran through the rules of pool, business-like and almost sterile, pointing out the pockets and the angles. Daniel listened intently to him, eyes on the felt, brow furrowed, like he was really concentrating. Johnny grabbed him a cue, chalking it and passing it over, careful to meet LaRusso’s eyes as he did. 

“Now, what you want to do is use this hand,” he held up his left hand, “guide the cue where you want it to go while your right hand provides the force. Here, try it, step up.” 

Daniel pulled his lips to one side, a quirked purse of his lips that Johnny was suddenly obsessed with. What did it mean? 

He cautiously stepped into Daniel’s space as he grabbed the cue, trying to mimic Johnny’s own stance from earlier. Johnny felt a rush of pride. So Daniel had noticed him even _before_ they spoke. 

“Here,” he put his hand flat on Daniel’s lower back, his other hand shifting Daniel’s hand on the cue just a tad higher. He leaned over him, his chest just barely hovering over Daniel’s back, removing his hand from Daniel’s lower back to reach over him to adjust his left hand. 

“Now what?” Daniel asked, and his voice was soft, breathless, almost gone, and Johnny clenched his jaw, biting back a smile. Daniel turned back to him, keeping his body still, and Johnny caught only a glimpse of his honey colored eyes before he was focusing and turning back to the table again.

“Now –” Johnny took hold of Daniel’s right hand, pulling it back and then forward, sending the cue ball into the perfect triangle of balls, the corner ones ricocheting off in different directions, the ones in the middle staying perfectly still. 

It wasn’t a good break, really, but Daniel straightened up, turning back to Johnny, an excited lift in his eyebrows, a pink flush on his neck. Johnny tried not to notice it. 

The game was Johnny’s worst of the evening, by far. He was too focused on the way Daniel was playing, eyes bright and hands eager, leaning over the table to find the right angles, his shirt falling open just barely as he did, tie loosened by that blonde. He wasn’t very accurate, but he was a quick study, and he sunk a fair few balls while Johnny missed easy shots because Daniel was walking behind him, taking sips out of his Shirley Temple, sleeves rolled up to the elbows. 

With only three balls left on the table, Kay and her friends returned, Kay slipping her arm around Johnny’s waist with no prompting, Avery leaning against the wall, her eyes on Daniel. 

Johnny didn’t want to dislike Avery, but there was something about her that seemed almost – she was a tiger, on a hunt, and poor LaRusso was powerless to find a way to get her to leave; no matter how much he tried to ignore her, he was still too fucking polite for his own good, and by the time he sunk the last ball, Avery had her hand on his shoulder, her lips in his ear. 

He took a long drink from his Coor’s, watching Avery lean into Daniel’s space, feeling like there was a flame lingering just a shade too close to him, burning him up slowly. 

Daniel looked up, catching his eye over the table. Johnny clenched his jaw, shrugging off Kay’s arm, striding past them all to get to the bar. He needed a stronger drink. 

***

“We’re about to get out of here,” Avery said, her eyes catlike and glittering in the yellow light from above the pool table. “Wanna come?” 

Daniel was only half-listening. He was trying to resist the urge to follow Johnny with his eyes, still trying to decipher the look on his face. He’d looked angry, but weren’t they just doing what Johnny had admitted to doing earlier? 

He had no actual intention of going home with Avery, but the look on Johnny’s face clearly said he was afraid that he would, after all. At least, that’s what Daniel got out of it. If anything, he looked jealous. 

Initially, the idea was ridiculous – what was there to be jealous of? And then Daniel remembered the way Johnny laid his hand flat on his back, fingers spread over his spine, breath hot in his ear, his hand covering his on the pool cue. The way he watched Daniel line up every shot, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, the girls he had paid such close attention to completely forgotten during their game. It was so clear now.

No matter what Johnny Lawrence thought, his face was always easy to read. 

“I’m just going to check on my friend,” he said, a plan rapidly forming in his head. He left her in the middle of a sentence, probably a protestation, and worked his way through the crowd to the bar. Johnny was sitting in the seat he had previously occupied, an empty glass in front of him. Whiskey, if Daniel had to guess. 

“I’d like to close my tab,” he said to the bartender instead of Johnny, forcing himself into the spot beside him, so close he could feel his hip pressed to Johnny’s knee. “And his.” 

“What are you doing, LaRusso?” Johnny asked, his voice rough from the whiskey. 

Daniel turned to give him a cursory glance. “Give me your keys,” he said. 

“Fuck you,” Johnny laughed, but there was still something fiery in his gaze. 

“Give them to me,” Daniel insisted, leaning closer, his elbows still on the bar. “Or I’ll take them from you.” 

Johnny exhaled in a rush, a bit of his hair falling down over his forehead. “You won’t.” 

Daniel scrunched his nose for a second, as if considering it. “Mmm, _yes,_ I will.” He put his hand on Johnny’s hip, where he knew his keys were clipped to his belt loop. “But I think you’ll give them to me.” 

Johnny swallowed, and Daniel took that opportunity to turn away from him and sign his credit card statement, removing his hand from Johnny’s hip to put his wallet back into his back pocket. Johnny didn’t move, but watched him do it before unclipping his keys and handing them over. 

It was _so clear_ now. 

***

Johnny sat in the passenger seat of his own car, watching Daniel LaRusso with his hands on the wheel of his car, feeling rather like a teenager nearing the end of a first date. He had been whisked out of the bar with Daniel’s hand burning through his jacket and shirt on the small of his back, commanding and tender all at once. He didn’t remember where Kay and her friends went. 

He didn’t really care. 

“Where did you learn to play pool?” Daniel asked, because it was quiet in the car, so quiet Johnny felt like he might explode. 

He shrugged. “Spent a lot of time in bars in my early twenties –”

“Hitting on older men like those girls?” 

“Just drinking what the bartender would give me cheap, playing pool so I wouldn’t have to go back to my un-air conditioned apartment in the summer,” Johnny said. He shifted in his seat to see Daniel better in the dark. “Since when do you frequent bars on a Friday night looking for a date?” 

“Who says I was looking for a date?” Daniel asked. 

“Your dark purple shirt, one button too many undone,” Johnny pointed out. “Rolled up to your elbows like you just want to look casual, but you’re only doing it because –” he stopped, snapping his jaw shut and looking out the window. 

Dammit, _this_ is why he didn’t drink whiskey. 

“Why am I doing it?” Daniel prompted. “Enlighten me.” While he drove, he pulled his tie down, loosening it further than before, pulling it over his head and tossing it behind him to the back seat. 

It was phrased like a reprimand, but there was a teasing lilt to his voice that Johnny had so rarely heard, but it was familiar to him in a way a siren song would be – he didn’t have to know exactly what it sounded like to know it was tempting, threatening, dangerous. 

“Because you know your arms look good,” he finished, deciding to say it with strength instead of showing weakness. 

And they did, flexed and extended to reach the steering wheel because he hadn’t adjusted the seat when he got into the driver’s side, too stubborn to admit that Johnny was taller than he was. Daniel didn’t answer, but raised his eyebrows in acknowledgment. 

“You could have gone home with that girl,” Johnny pointed out, nervously filling the silence. “She was practically crawling into your lap.” 

“You could have gone home with the birthday girl,” Daniel replied. 

“She’s a _child_ ,” Johnny muttered. She was a nice enough girl, from what he recalled from the evening, but he couldn’t get over how young she looked, unlined face and pink keychains hanging off her purse. 

“I have no interest in women half my age,” Daniel said firmly. “I prefer to keep the company of those my own age.” 

There was a pointedness in the statement that Johnny found hopeful. 

Daniel pulled into the parking lot of Johnny’s apartment complex, putting the car in park and turning the car off in one swift movement. Neither of them spoke – neither of them moved. Johnny felt that nervousness of a first date wash over him again. He hadn’t felt this anxious about ending a conversation since his first date with Ali. He remembered leaning in to kiss her, trying to pretend like his hands weren’t shaking by forcing them into his pockets, kissing her for just a moment before pulling away. 

He didn’t think he had the courage to do even that here. 

And then Daniel spoke, looking straight ahead. “Your move, Lawrence.” 

He swallowed and gathered his courage. 

“Come inside,” he said, and Daniel grinned, his smile bright in the darkness of the car, now that the headlights had faded. 

They stumbled over the entry of Johnny’s apartment, both of them almost tripping over the minuscule step up into his living room, lips pressed together, Daniel’s hands underneath Johnny’s leather jacket almost instantly, shoving it down his arms and tossing it unceremoniously across to the couch. 

Johnny kicked the door closed, letting Daniel grab him by the front of his shirt and pull him against the now closed door, tongue inside his mouth tasting, probing, possessing. He fumbled for the lock, his hand missing several times before it found what it was looking for, too distracted by Daniel’s hands on his hips, his teeth just barely grazing his lips, his breath hot and fast and focused. 

He pulled back, long enough to find the buttons on Daniel’s shirt and start working them open, hands shaking like they did with Ali, but more, fumbling over the little buttons. Daniel’s hands found his and stilled them, pulling back to survey Johnny’s face completely, even in the still dark living room (he never had found that light switch). 

“You okay?” he asked, out of breath and thoroughly tousled. Johnny nodded, not trusting his voice. “You’re sure.” 

“I’m sure,” Johnny said, when it was clear that Daniel was waiting for him to speak. Daniel rewarded him with a kiss, this one slow and sensual, his hand splayed out on Johnny’s chest. He reached for the buttons again, this time with steadier hands, and opened them one-by-one, Daniel leaning against the door, watching him work with lidded eyes. 

“Would you have gone home with that girl?” Johnny asked, and he could feel Daniel sigh, patient and exasperated. 

Daniel reached for his hips, grabbing for the belt loops, threading a finger through them on each side. “No,” he said, pulling Johnny closer by the belt loops. “Not after I saw you.” 

He wouldn’t have taken her home either way, but the purposeful phrasing was worth it when Johnny’s eyes brightened, a pink flush creeping up his neck. 

“You’re damn right, LaRusso,” Johnny said triumphantly, leaning in for another kiss, this time the shakes in his hands completely forgotten.


End file.
